Last night, Anonymous, through its @AnonymousIRC Twitter account, launched a boycott of PayPal. Unlike previous campaigns, Anonymous did not organize a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, which overloads a website and causes it to crash. This time, as one supporter described it, they were launching a DBoS (Distributed Boycott of Services). Backstory: Anonymous launched a DDoS attack on PayPal in December when the online-payment site refused to let users donate to WikiLeaks. Last week, the FBI announced the arrest of 14 people it said participated in that campaign. On Monday, the student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas reported that one of its students, Mercedes Renee Haefer, 20, was one of the 14 arrested. On Monday night, @AnonmousIRC tweeted a link to another story purportedly showing a picture of Haefer. Her name had been reported before, and her attorney was quoted as comparing her to Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Maybe it was the photo – a webcam shot of an attractive young woman wearing headphones – that got Anonymous fired up. Ironically, a face to sympathize with. @AnonymousIRC retweeted people who said they had closed their PayPal accounts and shared screencaps to prove it. More

The eBay offer to buy old iPhones and Androids for a minimum of $200 was to end on Feb. 22, but it was extended for two weeks. I got $200 for my iPhone 3GS. I clicked a few circles on eBay and was given a FedEx shipping label to print out. I dropped my old iPhone in an envelope with the free shipping label and that was it. Yesterday I got an email from eBay saying the phone was inspected and the sale was completed (see above). eBay figured it could make a mint off of AT&T customers dumping their iPhones for the Verizon iPhone. Verizon sales are brisk, but it hasn’t been the stampede that was hyped by the media. There is plenty of speculation as to why several years of bellyaching about AT&T’s call service hasn’t translated into the anticipated rush for Verizon iPhones (see video below). As for me, I sold my old iPhone because it had turned into a paperweight. I’m happy with my AT&T iPhone 4. The $200 will likely go to Apple because Steve needs my money.

That’s my old iPhone 3GS (above). When I upgraded to the iPhone 4, I kept my 3GS. I didn’t think it was worth much, and I figured I could use it as a backup on WiFi. But with the Verizon iPhones going on sale this week, eBay has offered to buy AT&T iPhones and some Androids for $200 minimum, figuring a ton of them will get dumped in favor of switching to Verizon for its generally better signal service. Sounds like a good deal, right? I read, however, that the average sale price for an iPhone 3GS in a regular eBay auction is about $340. Of course, average is not what everyone pays. If I offered it up direct, I could get lucky. As an alternative (if I was getting the Verizon iPhone), I could get trade-in credit from Verizon. But I’m not switching phones. AT&T’s service works fairly well in Philadelphia, at least for me. I’ve bought stuff through eBay, but never sold anything. Hmm. Maybe I’ll just put it in a blender: